"Damn it! This one's tough! Give me all your cursed energy!"
The lead curse user's face went pale as he finally realized he had kicked an iron plate.
He roared madly, raising all ten fingers and pressing his palms together, forming a lotus prayer seal.
The two Grade 2 Curse Users behind him did not dare hesitate. Gritting their teeth, they formed the same hand seal and, through their technique-linked connection, poured every last bit of cursed energy in their bodies into the largest octopus shikigami standing at the rear.
As the massive influx of cursed energy entered it, the two curse users' bodies rapidly shriveled and withered. In the end, they collapsed limply to the ground like paper cutouts drained of moisture, completely unconscious.
The core octopus shikigami, having absorbed the entirety of its two companions' power, swelled wildly. Countless barbs erupted from its once-slick skin, and its body instantly expanded to nearly four meters tall. The cursed energy it radiated was likewise forcibly raised to the Semi-Grade 1 level!
A faint, eerie green glow shimmered at the tips of its tentacles. That was the shikigami's special ability—Deep-Sea Venom.
This toxin was vicious and carried powerful neurotoxicity. Even a Grade 1 Sorcerer who accidentally came into contact with it would have half their body paralyzed within seconds, left at the mercy of others.
Of course, this deadly poison, which targeted the flesh, had no effect whatsoever on shikigami formed entirely from cursed energy.
"I've survived in the black market for twenty years! I'm not like you little brats raised in a greenhouse! Die!" the lead curse user roared frenziedly.
"Go." Lu Ping stood at the rear and spat out a single word without expression.
His face was somewhat pale.
Maintaining Shadow Wolf's Crimson Shadow Form came at an enormous cost. Not only did it have harsh environmental restrictions, but during that time, the cursed-energy reinforcement on Lu Ping's own body dropped by roughly forty percent, all of it diverted to supply the shikigami.
Even so, he could currently maintain Crimson Shadow's unstable enhanced form for no more than three minutes.
This had to end quickly!
Boom—!!
Two colossal beings, both at the Semi-Grade 1 level, slammed viciously into each other before the ruins of the old cinema.
Yet the expected evenly matched clash never came.
Even among Semi-Grade 1s, there were differences. And the overwhelming gulf in technique performance was an insurmountable chasm!
Though the giant octopus shikigami's attacks were powerful and heavy, its countless tentacles attempting to trap Crimson Shadow like a cage, Crimson Shadow stood upon the Blood Mist Domain. For every second it remained within the domain, a portion of the giant octopus's cursed energy was invisibly siphoned away.
What was even more unfair was that Crimson Shadow was linked to Lu Ping, a "transfer station," while Lu Ping, through the Three Corpses, was frantically absorbing massive amounts of negative emotions from the hundreds of thousands of panicked civilians around them like he was at an all-you-can-eat buffet!
As long as the negative emotions in the area were not exhausted, Crimson Shadow's energy was nearly limitless in the short term!
Rip—!!
Violence filled Crimson Shadow's six scarlet vertical pupils. It allowed several tentacles to wrap tightly around its body, then seized the giant octopus's head with its long wolf claws and tore hard!
Black cursed residue mixed with foul-smelling fluid splattered everywhere.
The giant octopus let out a pained wail. Under Crimson Shadow's savage tearing, empowered by the properties of Blood Corpse Digestion, its body grew smaller and smaller as the blood mist and claws on Crimson Shadow's body relentlessly devoured and consumed its energy.
In less than thirty seconds, the once-imposing giant octopus was torn apart by Crimson Shadow into a shriveled empty shell.
"It's over."
Lu Ping spoke coldly.
Crimson Shadow immediately understood. Its enormous crimson wolf claw, carrying the force to split mountains and shatter rocks, crashed down!
Bang!!
With a crisp crack, the Semi-Grade 1 shikigami, formed from the combined efforts of three Grade 2 Curse Users, did not even have time to self-destruct before Crimson Shadow's claw smashed it apart. It turned into a lifeless puddle of ordinary water that rapidly spread across the ground.
The agonizing backlash struck. The two curse users lying in the distance, now reduced to "paper people," vomited blood on the spot and fell completely into shock.
The entire battlefield fell into deathly silence in an instant.
Only the blazing white Jujutsu High signal flare in the night sky continued to cast its cold light over the wreckage strewn across the ground.
Stepping through the water and cursed residue, the three-meter-tall Crimson Shadow slowly turned its head. Its six dark crimson vertical pupils, devoid of any emotion, locked onto the last curse user still standing—the leader, whose face had gone utterly bloodless with terror.
With every step it took, a crimson claw print scorched black into the ground, like a death god's countdown.
"No... impossible... This is absolutely impossible..."
The white-robed lead curse user's legs shook violently. His teeth clattered incessantly from overwhelming terror.
As a veteran curse user who had operated in the shadows for many years, he had seen countless strange and bizarre techniques.
But now, looking at this crimson giant wolf summoned from shadows, displaying terrifyingly overwhelming performance against shikigami-type techniques, as though it had crushed them from an entirely higher dimension...
An ancient and bloody rumor buried deep within the Jujutsu World suddenly flashed through his mind like lightning.
It was the ultimate legend of shadows and monsters, the only power from the Heian Era more than a thousand years ago that had once been able to challenge the foremost of the Three Great Families—and even confront that strongest sorcerer family head-on.
He trembling raised a finger toward Lu Ping. His voice completely warped from extreme terror as he shrieked in a stammer:
"A monster that manipulates shadows like this... such overwhelmingly powerful technique performance... Th-this could it be... the supreme technique of the Zenin Clan, one of the Three Great Families, lost for many years—the technique said to summon the strongest shikigami—
[Ten Shadows Technique]?!"
Lu Ping did not answer him. He merely stood quietly in the shadows, cold moonlight falling over his indifferent face. "Do it."
Without hesitation, Crimson Shadow extended its scarlet claw and smashed it down, pounding the curse user into the ground like a whack-a-mole target and knocking him completely unconscious.
Yet before Lu Ping could finish dealing with the leader who had lost his will to fight, an indescribably intense sense of danger suddenly exploded from the base of his spine without warning!
"Drip."
From the direction of the warehouse behind the shrine, where flames soared into the sky, the sound of footsteps crushing rubble slowly rose.
A terrifying cursed-energy presence, far greater and colder than that Semi-Grade 1 Cursed Spirit from before and filled with pure killing intent, was speeding through the billowing smoke toward the main battlefield on the commercial street at an astonishing pace!
The other team of curse users had clearly already dealt with the warehouse ritual and was now closing in from this side.
At the same time, the red light on Crimson Shadow's forehead, marking the fusion countdown, began to flicker faintly.
Before you continue